[kwlug-disc] Wanted: help in refining presentation

[unsolicited]

On 7/23/2012 10:41 PM, L.D. Paniak wrote:
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> Personally, I'd like to see the ZFS/SAN/iSCSI target topic.  Maybe as
> backend storage for ESX among other uses.
>
> Cluster file systems are also interesting.

These seem a little heavy for the group. Needing a certain level of 
hardware to hand before one gets near, beyond the normal reach of our 
average hobbyist. (Perhaps a little hard to go home and practice what 
you just saw in your basement?) Seems more professional development to 
me. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, and if the interest is there, 
go nuts.


If we approach these areas as investigating the virtual, demonstrated 
with a particular set of tools (even if proprietary), then I cannot see 
how it cannot be anything but all good. (Especially when, once you 
understand a concept, it's relatively easy to find the corresponding 
concept in VirtualBox.)


You might consider instead of a Kiwi only presentation, a themed 
(virtual) night.

For example:
- we're all running a web server in a vm appropriately isolated off, 
aren't we?
- want to check out a <something>, and there's an appliance?
- following best practices, we're all running pfsense, right? No, well 
how about doing so in a vm?
- any of Kiwi's potential topics
- probably many more
- especially, and particularly with ESX, there's a certain mental 
distrust of the non-physical to overcome. Making people more comfortable 
with having one around, and care, feeding, and control, leads to all else.
- serving up thin clients (PXE?) seems useful. Although such a 
presentation would probably spend most of the time on the nature of the 
clients served up. Serve up xbmc for an evening's entertainment, reboot 
the next day to do 'real' work?


Not long ago in the list there was a discussion about remote servers / 
hosts, e.g. Amazon. Perhaps a discussion of such ecosystems ties in here?


Not long ago I came across 
http://pandodaily.com/news/mozilla-to-end-active-development-of-thunderbird-email-client/, 
indicating that active thunderbird development is going to be declining.

Not long ago I came across Zimbra again. 
(http://www.vmware.com/products/zimbra/overview.html) Hadn't known 
Zimbra was now a vmware thing.

If there is interest, and if we're talking vmware things, perhaps Zimbra 
could be discussed in a presentation.


> On 07/23/2012 10:01 PM, Paul Nijjar wrote:
>>
>> So I ran into Kiwi this weekend, and we got talking about KWLUG
>> presentations. He would like to give another presentation soon, but
>> he is not sure what would be popular/appreciated, and he is too shy(!)
>> to ask on the list himself.
>>
>> Context:
>> - Kiwi works for VMware and knows a lot about that product (especially
>> the storage side), and his tendency is present something in this
>> area.
>> - He wants to cater the presentation to the interests of members
>> - He is aware that marketing heavy (and proprietary-heavy)
>> presentations tend not to go over well in this group
>>
>>
>> Here are some (although probably not all) of the ideas we threw
>> around:
>>
>> 0. His experiences in putting together a lab of two virtual ESX hosts
>> serving 20 or so thin clients.
>>
>> 1. A "deep dive" discussion of some aspect of virualization and/or
>> VMware. Kiwi suggested looking through logs to diagnose common
>> problems as one issue.
>>
>> 2. Implementing a lab in an open-source virtualization product (and
>> maybe comparing it to VMware).
>>
>> 3. A discussion of cluster filesystems and what they have to offer.
>>
>> 4. His experiences in building a cheap but robust SAN using a chassis,
>> a bunch of SATA drives, and the Nexenta OpenSolaris distro.
>>
>> 5. A discussion of the free (gratis) VMware products and how far you
>> can get with them before you need to purchase components of the VMware
>> ecosystem.
>>
>>
>> I realize that it will be difficult to come to a consensus on which
>> presentation Kiwi should give in this thread. But hopefully your
>> responses can help guide him to choosing a topic or two. So what
>> sounds interesting to you? What related topics would you like to see
>> presented?